


Brisk Notes in Cadence Beating

by Allekha



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Divorce, Gen, Growing Up, Mentors, Minor Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 13:05:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19812889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Allekha/pseuds/Allekha
Summary: Victor had been taught a lot of things by Lilia, ever since he was a child. He'd learned about dance in her studio, about beauty in the rink, about life while living with her, and about the potential of love.





	Brisk Notes in Cadence Beating

**Author's Note:**

  * For [orro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orro/gifts).



Lilia was the one who discovered him.

Victor's mother was a former ballet dancer, and outside of school, his days were filled with dance lessons from her and skating time at the rink. He liked dance – it was fun, and she would let him spend a few minutes playing in the studio at the end of the day – but he _loved_ skating. When his mother dropped him off for lessons or practice, Victor would happily spend hours spinning, jumping, and coming up with new combinations of the footwork he was learning.

"He has a lot of talent," he heard his coach say to his mother once. Victor hadn't been able to hide his smile afterward.

He liked knowing that he was talented, but he wanted to be more than just another good skater at his rink. When his mother demonstrated ballet, she was incredibly graceful, poised – Victor wanted to look like her, and he wanted to skate looking so beautiful.

One day, she went into the city proper to have lunch with an old ballet friend of hers, and she took Victor along to drop him off at a rink. Victor didn't like it as much as his home rink, since the lighting was weird and there were more people to dodge around than he was used to, but ice time was ice time.

When his mother reappeared, there was another woman with her – older than her, dark-haired. Something about her looked familiar, though Victor couldn't place her face as he skated over. He went up to his mother first to hug her over the boards, but then it was hard not to stare at the other woman.

"Her husband is a skating coach," his mother said. "I asked her to take a look at you."

Victor understood: she'd asked his coach if he really needed more lessons when his coach tried to insist on them, saying that talent shouldn't go to waste. His mother could see that he was skilled, but she was a dancer, not a skater. She'd told him that she couldn't tell if his coach was trying to make them feel good and earn more money, or if he was being accurate.

And now here was a chance to show off in front of someone else who knew skating. Victor smiled at her; she gave him a cool look in return. She looked strict, and not just because her hair bun was even more perfect than his mother's. But Victor was sure he could impress her.

He ran through his spins for her, then his jumps, and he didn't fall on any of them. He did trip over his toepick when he tried to glide past on a spiral, but he got back up and did it again, then a better one, catching his blade and curving his leg and back together to show off the flexibility his mother made him work so much on. The woman didn't say much as he skated, only speaking to give him the occasional direction, until she was apparently satisfied.

"Yasha needs to see him," she said to his mother. Victor peered up at her again, still trying to work out where – oh. _Oh_.

"You're Lilia Baranovskaya," he blurted. She started and gave him a look; his mother had to stifle laughter in her hand. Of course he'd seen videos of _Lilia Baranovskaya_ , and his mother had a few pictures that included both of them alongside other dancers. To have someone as famous as her in front of him was like a dream come true. And she'd seen that his talent was there!

"Yes," she said, her face relaxing into something more amused.

They came back to Saint Petersburg next week to try out with Lilia's husband, at a rink that Victor loved from the first moment. There was a wall of windows to let in the sunlight, and not too many skaters on the ice. Yakov Feltsman looked just as strict as Lilia, but he softened in the same way when Victor leaned over the boards, beamed, and said, "Hi! I'm Vitya!"

From then on, he skated there almost every day, and had lessons with Lilia several times a week. His mother seemed happy with the arrangement, even with the additional travel time; sometimes she stayed at the rink for a few minutes to watch him, and she smiled at him the same way she always did when Victor performed some trick to impress her.

~!~

When Victor was twelve, his mother finally gave in to his begging and let him get a puppy. When he was thirteen, struggling to keep up with school and sleep and all of his lessons, she let him start spending weekdays closer to the rink to reduce the commute – not alone, of course. Makkachin came with him to Lilia and Yakov's apartment.

Living with them was different. They were quieter, and at first Victor felt bad about touching anything because of how clean Lilia kept everything. Every night, after Yakov had put together dinner, she would sweep through the kitchen and leave it sparkling.

He kept his room neat to match the rest of the apartment, or so he thought until Lilia showed up in his doorway and declared it needed cleaning. "What's wrong with it?" he asked. Sure, his desk was a little messy, but he needed those papers on it to finish his homework.

"The bed, for one thing," she said, and when he gave her a blank look – it was made – she sighed and ran her hand over the rumpled covers. "Take these off."

Lilia showed him how to make the bed so that everything lay nicely, and she showed him how to fold his clothes better, too, so that they would fit more easily into the drawers and wouldn't wrinkle. The curtains were dusty, so they washed them, and later she showed him how to iron them.

She taught him how to do lots of other things after that – how to make good coffee, which his mother didn't drink, or what clothes should look like when they fit and how to decide if they suited him. She'd given opinions on his costumes before and braided his hair for competitions, but Victor started to understand how Lilia looked so put-together all the time. It wasn't just that her hair was sleek and her clothes were nice. She took him to buy a new suit and he could _feel_ the difference when he wore it (and also in his pocketbook, but it was worth the price).

Victor was supposed to spend more time at home that summer, and he did, for a few weeks, but it was kind of nice to return to Yakov and Lilia's apartment again. Lilia would give him one reminder to do his chores or schoolwork and then assumed he would do it, instead of asking him five times in an hour. Yakov was a better cook than his mother, and he didn't have to sneak chocolates by Lilia as long as it was only a few of them. (Sometimes she would even buy them with him, since she loved chocolate, too.)

Besides, he didn't have much to talk about with his mother, compared to them. He lived and breathed skating; she couldn't tell a lutz from an axel. It was fine. She had her world, and he had his. But Lilia could name favorite ice dancers. Yakov had introduced her to some of them.

He started visiting her every other weekend, and then just on occasion; next summer, he only stayed for a couple of weeks, and spent half of it telling her about how Lilia had brought him along on her recent trip to Paris. It had been every bit as wonderful as he'd hoped, and she'd taken him to the theater and to her favorite restaurant there. They'd sat in a park one night, watching the people go by as she told him stories from the first time she'd visited the city, when she was still the Bolshoi's prima.

Her face had looked younger as she'd talked, in warm glow of the streetlights; her posture even relaxed somewhat as she described how the theatergoers had welcomed her, a light in her eyes at the old memory. Victor hadn't been able to look away from them. Sometimes he forgot that Lilia did dance, and was so strict about it, because she loved it, with the kind of love that had meant that she couldn't do anything else. It was the same sense of wonder and the pleasure of having an audience that always made Victor smile so much at a competition. She didn't show that side of herself often, but it was still there.

~!~

At seventeen, Victor thought he had to be the happiest teenager in Russia. He'd smashed all the naysayer's expectations to claim the Olympic title for his own, and then he'd won Worlds on top of it. Even after all of that, he was looking forward to seeing what else he could do, the possibilities dancing before his eyes in his dreams. More quads, even better programs, and of course more medals for his collection.

And then Yakov sat him down in the living room and explained, in an unusually gentle voice that suggested he was worried about Victor's reaction, that he and Lilia were getting divorced.

Victor didn't understand why – they didn't fight that much, and he didn't know any other reason why people might get divorced. Yakov wasn't able to explain it very well, and upset and confused, Victor had gone straight to Lilia, barging into their bedroom.

"Sometimes people drift apart," she said, glancing at him over the laundry she was folding. "We were in love, and now we have decided that we are not, and that we would prefer to live apart. Not all separations are as dramatic as the breakups that you and Zhora have with your dates, Vitya."

Victor opened his mouth to ask _how could that happen_ , and then remembered that he hadn't called his mother in four months, not since the Olympics. But at least he didn't live with her. It seemed impossible for two people to fall out of love when they shared the same space.

"But who's going to teach me ballet?" he asked plaintively, when he ran out of ways to ask around _when did this happen_ (they'd been normal at the Olympics and Worlds!) and _why._

Lilia eased a blouse onto its hanger and looked at him with furrowed eyebrows. "I don't recall saying that I was unwilling to continue teach you. Although if you would prefer, I could find someone for you. There are other good ballet instructors in the city besides myself and your mother."

"No, I don't want another one – I just thought – I thought you'd be moving to Moscow, or something."

This time she gave him a baffled expression. "No? I don't have any plans to move at this moment."

"Oh. You're not, I don't know, going back to the Bolshoi?"

"I would like to do more work in the ballet world again," she mused. "Perhaps starting with the Mariinsky, as I've been in contact with people there." Victor flopped on the bed in relief – he didn't have to try and find another teacher! She could keep doing choreography for him! It would still be weird with them, but it wasn't as much of a disaster as he'd feared. Lilia sat down beside him and asked, "Did he tell you I was leaving?"

"No. But isn't that usually what happens when people get divorced? They fight a lot and then they break up and they never talk to each other again." (Except when circumstances forced them to and they fell back in love, but Victor only knew that kind of story from romance movies he'd watched with Georgi.)

"Not always," she said. She smoothed down a lock of his hair, her touch warm and familiar and firm. "We are professionals. We can work professionally. In particular, I don't feel the need to abandon you after so many years helping you to get where you are. I think you still have much to achieve artistically, and many surprises in store for us yet, Vitya."

"I hope so," he said, smiling up at her. "It would really suck if I peaked at seventeen, wouldn't it?"

"You haven't peaked," she said, and the confidence in her voice made him smile even more. "You still have things to learn. Didn't you say you wanted to try your hand at choreography? Perhaps next season we could make your exhibition together."

Victor pushed himself up on his arms. "Can we? I can't wait!"

He could have moved out when Yakov did, but in the end, he decided that Lilia was better company in the evenings; Yakov liked to have peace and quiet after a long day of coaching, and sometimes got grumpy if Victor tried to talk too much. Besides, Victor would see him every day, for hours and hours, at the rink. So he decided to stay with her, although sometimes he missed Yakov's cooking and stole over to his place for dinner.

There was awkwardness – she didn't come to his competitions any longer. Sometimes when she and Yakov did meet, they were snippier with each other than before, the affectionate touches Victor remembered from his childhood gone. He still didn't know what he'd missed. But Lilia had been right – they were professional, or at least professional enough to make it work.

And it was still peaceful at home. She didn't talk about Yakov, and he didn't bring him up, or ask again about what had gone wrong between them. On their days off, sometimes she would join him on walks with Makkachin when the weather was nice, and while she wasn't a dog person, once or twice, Victor caught her giving in to Makkachin's puppy-dog eyes and stroking her head.

She showed him how to thread a needle, though when it came to sewing, she could only help with things so basic as lost buttons and, as she'd said, "Should you ever need to sew ribbons onto your shoes," and he had to take a shirt with a torn seam to Yakov instead. He'd always liked books, but she started to give him recommendations from her own collection, which he'd barely touched before. It didn't take much discussion of what he'd read to realize that she was a bit of a romantic at heart, too, even if she preferred more serious books than he did.

One day, Victor even learned that Lilia _did_ curse. They were cleaning in the kitchen – Victor kind of enjoyed it now – and she dropped a teacup onto her foot. It bounced and shattered on the tile with an awful sound, and Lilia let out a few choice words before she grit her teeth, staring at the remains of the teacup.

"At least it wasn't one of the pretty ones," Victor said while he swept up the shards of ceramic around her feet. He decided not to mention the un-beautiful words she'd said, though the surprise had put a grin on his face that she had to see.

Lilia worked with him on the choreography, as she'd promised, and by the end of the season, he'd switched to another exhibition program that he'd mostly done himself, though she'd critiqued him heavily to help improve it. It was amazing. Victor loved how expressive skating let him be, but now he could make his own stories to tell, playing any character he liked, or show off the images that the music brought to his mind. He couldn't wait to make more programs. There was a folder on his laptop that had a bunch of songs he wanted to try choreographing.

Usually, his practices were followed by additional criticisms or another lecture about beauty (Victor took them all to heart). There was one day, though, before Worlds, when everything came together perfectly. When he got off the ice, she didn't have that much of a lecture for him. "It's good that we didn't lose you as a performer to some other sport or vocation," she said while he was struggling with his skate guards, and the words were a little bit like winning a medal already.

~!~

Lilia did eventually move back out to Moscow for work, though not until after the next Olympics. He'd moved out on his own by then, and she came to tell him in person over tea. When she left, he looked at the decorations she'd gifted him – a set of nesting dolls, and a framed picture of a beautiful, pale-haired ice dancer who they were both a fan of four decades after her retirement – and felt a small pang.

At least he was busy with skating, and with university, learning about choreography from other teachers besides her. And he was an adult now; he didn't need her to teach him how to read French properly or to tell him how often he should mop the floor. He missed tea with her, and there was no other instructor quite like Lilia, but he could live with it.

Besides, she wasn't entirely gone. She texted him on occasion, and she came to his competitions as a spectator when it was convenient for her. There she would be, in one of the nicest seats, clapping politely for the competitors, her gaze as heavy as always. She didn't throw flowers or wave a flag or scream _davai_ like some of his fans, but she was present, and he liked knowing that he could still hold her attention.

Even when she wasn't there, he knew she watched sometimes, because she would send him comments. _Your legs needs to be higher on your first spiral_ , one might read _. It looks inelegant. I assume you have not lost all of your flexibility without my lessons._ Or, _The step sequence does not suit the character of the music at all – you should redo it._ _And you have started to rush so that you can be sure to hit the following jump on the music. Please fix it._ Or, once, she had only written: _What are you wearing, Vitya?_

She had nice things to say, too, though as ever, compliments were a rare treat from her. Possibly the nicest thing she'd ever said about him was during an interview before Sochi, when she'd deigned to allow a reporter to speak with her. "There are many things that contribute to his success," she'd said. "He has talent, but talent is worthless without work and proper nurture, and success is never a guarantee. He has been fortunate enough to be born where his talents could be identified and he could receive proper training, and he has worked very, very hard to develop them. I have seen him toil to correct his faults and to smooth over every imperfection he can fix in his skating and in his programs. Of course he is human, and errors are inevitable, but he does not make many, and I expect he will give us the most beautiful performances he is capable of."

Lilia was right. He was proud of those skates, though the medal ceremony had felt oddly distant and hollow. Maybe he was just tired. The Olympics were stressful for everyone, and the constant press attention, while flattering, was exhausting. Victor kept his smile on anyway, because Lilia had taught him to always be nice on the outside for the sake of his reputation.

The exhaustion didn't quite go away over the summer, or next season, or the season after, but nobody mentioned something going wrong with his skating – not Yakov, and not Lilia – so Victor tried to keep working through it.

 _Your free program_ _was wonderfully expressive_ , Lilia sent after his fifth Worlds win. _The short was a bit off the mark, though I realize you've had difficulty with it this season._ She didn't ask about his plans for next season, which was a relief.

Victor swiped away from his texts and lowered a hand down to Makkachin's head, happy to be back in his apartment and relaxing on the couch with his dog. Just a few seconds later, though, Mila messaged him a link. Something about a video of another skater doing his program?

Half an hour later, Victor had watched the video seven times in a row, and he knew exactly what he was doing next season.

Over the summer – a wonderful, frustrating, sparkling new kind of summer – Lilia only messaged him once, and not about his departure from Russia. (She didn't even put out a statement, though the drama-hungry journalists must have tried hard to get one from her.) It was about Yuri, asking if he was always so surly and rude.

 _Most of the time!_ Victor wrote back in the middle of a late stroll by the Hasetsu sea with Makkachin. _You could try getting him to make pirozhki with you. He likes those._

 _Thank you_ , she wrote back a few hours later. _We enjoyed the meal_.

He bet they had. Yuri didn't know how to cook a lot of things, but he seemed to enjoy it, and the recipes he did know were good. Victor didn't miss much about Russia, but the thought of pirozhki had him going to one of the bakeries in town with Yuuri to see what Japanese bread was like. (Different and delicious. He liked the red bean filling that several of them had and ate more than he should have.)

Victor messaged her once, too, when he had a question about training Yuuri that he couldn't seem to figure out. _Is Yakov still mad at me?_ There was no point in trying to ask for advice from him if he was.

 _You left him unexpectedly and didn't bring flowers_ , she replied.

Which wasn't really an answer, but was probably a yes. _I'm taking a break, not retiring. When I decide to retire, I'll thank him properly_ , he wrote back. He wasn't sure if he ever wanted to return to competition – he was happier coaching Yuuri than he had been in ages – but he could act the part of the duly grateful student when he had made that final decision. Maybe he would do a last Olympics. He could figure it out later.

 _Then you may discuss anything you have to say with him_.

Victor stared at the message and decided that maybe he and Yuuri could work it out on their own. Yakov probably wouldn't pick up the phone from him, and anyway, he would get over it. If Victor still had questions, he could ask Yakov when they met in China. Maybe they could go out to dinner and talk _as coaches_! That would be exciting.

~!~

There were a lot of things that Victor was happy to introduce Yuuri to when they moved back to Russia, though they wouldn't have a lot of time for real sight-seeing until after Worlds. But they couldn't spend all day at the rink and at the gym, and since they had to eat, Victor had an excuse to feed him all of his favorite foods from back home.

Victor was also delighted to introduce him to Lilia. She would see how fantastic he was at dancing, and Victor wanted everybody in the world to know how amazing Yuuri was.

He'd forgotten, a little, how demanding her lessons were in the years without them, but he felt like he managed to keep up after a few minutes, even if he wasn't as lovely as Yuuri or as flexible as Yuri was. Afterward, he stayed behind with her as Yuuri and Yuri left, their words echoing down the hall. "Yes, he's very good," she said. "I know his old ballet teacher. She has done an excellent job of teaching him."

" _And_ he's talented."

"And there is that," she granted. Victor couldn't keep the silly grin off his face. "And he is also...." She let her words die, frowning, and bent to pick up her bag from the floor, one hand on the barre. "For you, there was something missing, before. I couldn't ever quite figure out what it was. In the last couple of years, your programs weren't what they could be, though they were still enjoyable. It was love, wasn't it?"

"Yes," he said, picking up his own bag. In the mirrors, he could see his smile had faded to a different one. He liked it. It wasn't the press smile, the post-skate smile, the social media smile. It was simple and fond.

"He's brought it back to you," she said. "Your skating is different now, even in practice, and for the better. It reminds me of when you were a little boy who always laughed while he trained because he was having so much fun."

"I thought I was just tired," said Victor. She nodded, brushing past him to let him out of the studio. In the hall, Yuuri and Yuri were long gone.

"Perhaps you were," she said. "It's common. You might have said something."

"Oh."

"But many don't," she admitted. "Nobody likes saying it, because they think they will sound weak. In any case, the break may have helped, as well. It takes time to remake the self, and the support that comes from love can help us craft ourselves into better images. But to do that is a sign of strength. He has done it, too – I watched some of his old programs, and he has grown tremendously with you by his side. I hope that means more beautiful performances from the both of you."

Her words made him feel warm and light. "Watching them makes me want to skate again and skate better, and I know Yuuri has even more potential than he's shown already," he said. "And I have new ideas for programs! Mostly show programs, though."

"I like your shows," she said. "There can be creativity in restrictions, but the competition system is too restrictive at times. Your duet was one of the most lovely things you've skated in years."

"I felt happier skating it than I have in years." He smiled at her. "Have I told you how amazing Yuuri is, yet?"

"I believe you've said it one or twenty times," she said dryly. "Perhaps you could come for dinner to elaborate. I don't believe I've had a real chance to speak with him yet."

Dinner was in her old apartment, and it was lively. Yakov kept trying to tell Yuri off for a stunt he'd pulled at the rink earlier, which Yuri was ignoring in favor his phone, while Lilia asked Yuuri about Minako and his dance training, and Makkachin sniffed around their feet and angled for attention from everyone.

He knew Yakov already secretly adored Yuuri for his dedication in practice, and of course Yuri was friends with him in his own way. Lilia was taking a liking to him, too, he could tell. She talked with him all through dinner.

"She likes you," he told Yuuri while they walked home, hand-in-hand, pleased that this important introduction had gone as well as he'd expected. "Just as I said, right?"

"She's a strict teacher," said Yuuri. "No wonder Yurio's stamina is improving with those lessons. Are they always like that?" He nodded; Lilia didn't go easy on anyone. "She kind of reminds me of you when you're coaching."

"Does she?" He hadn't consciously modeled his coaching style on her very much, the way he'd done with Yakov – Yuuri needed help with image and his technical skills, but not so much with the beauty of his skating. But it made sense. He'd trained with her for a long time, too.

"You say some things the same way," Yuuri said. "And she expects a lot. When we were talking, she said – I think it was a joke – that she thought I could win Worlds, and that if I didn't, it should be because you or Yurio won instead."

Victor laughed. That sounded good to him. "She's right," he said. "And she's not as biased as I am, so you can't tell me don't believe her."

Yuuri smiled and squeezed his hand, and they continued home to rest for another day of hard work and lessons. And back in the rink the next day, skating through the programs he'd hastily constructed for Nationals, Victor could _feel_ the love she'd mentioned. The love of skating, which had somehow slipped away, and the various kinds of love, which he hadn't noticed fading, that filled his life with light and meaning. It filled him now, watching Yuuri work on his jumps, listening to Yakov yelling at Mila, watching Lilia tug Yuri's arms into place, and it lit something in him just as much as the sunlight from the windows lit their beautiful rink.


End file.
